"If, in fact, hybrids get us back to electric vehicles, and that's where we ultimately want to get back to, maybe the hybrid enthusiasm is a blessing," he said.
The press release looks like a stock promotion scheme. To actually realize the hybrid synergy drive in production cars required a massive investment by the Toyota Motor Corporation. Toyota lost money on each Prius for a while. From a newsletter consider this item.
At the 2003 Detroit Motor Show. G. Richard Wagoner, the CEO of General Motors, boasted the company would be marketing hybrid-electric vehicles from the year-end and would sell a million of them in 2007. But the years passed without a single full-scale hybrid-electric vehicle rolling off a GM assembly line. Meanwhile Japanese automakers steadily gained a foothold in the hybrid-electric vehicle market.
That's interesting. IIRC Lexus only expected to sell 12,000 units yearly. Based on August sales, it appears they will sell a bit more if you use that as a monthly benchmark. I also think the Civic sales will increase a great deal as the new model is really a big improvement over the previous model.
I live in Lansing , Michigan and considering buying a Prius. I need an honest answer as to its ability to drive in the snow. Is the front wheel drive ample to get around in a snowy climate vs an all wheel drive or four wheel drive vehicle? Thanks to anyone who can help.
Hi Larry! A number of people have asked the same question in the Toyota Prius 2004+ discussion. If you click on the link, you can post your question there and/or once in the discussion use the "search this discussion box" in the upper right just above the messages and type in 'snow'. There are plenty of posts about the Prius in snow that I'm sure you will find very helpful.
"As the price of gas has risen, manufacturers have worked to lower the price of hybrids. The average price of a hybrid vehicle in 1999 was around $89,000. Toyota said its 2005 Prius, a roomy four-door coupe, gets about 60 miles per gallon. The price tag on this new vehicle is around $20,000, which is competitive with most new vehicles."
$89,000 eh? wonder how long before that buyer recoups his money with gas savings :P
I noticed something interesting in that article about the pumps and how they cant display gas prices above $2.999. isn't that a weird number? why isn't it $9.999? Let me say some of the gas stations where I live have no problems displaying prices over $2.999.
I've read many, many different reports and most magazines are getting 42-46 in their long term Prius. On Greenhybrid, the average user is getting 48. I myself am getting 49.8 in suburban driving. Couldn't be happier.
It is impossible to find the car in CA since the carpool law has passed. Any one try to buy a car from AZ or NV into California? DMV Information said that car has to be Ca Certified. Anyone has experience in this?
With gas prices in the county soaring well over $3 in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, on top of record-breaking prices during the summer, hybrid and other fuel-efficient vehicles are in greater demand than ever before, according to local car dealers.
Anyone concerned about Prius shortages, dont be. The new Toyota plant in Tokyo City can produce one Prius per minute, 1440 a day, 10,080 a week, 40,320 a month. I think the supply is solid....
"TOKYO, Sept. 5 - With Hurricane Katrina pushing American gas prices above $3 a gallon at the pump, Toyota Motor may find itself in the right place at the right time, with a new, half-mile assembly line capable of producing gasoline-electric hybrid Prius cars at the rate of one a minute.
The line, in a factory in Toyota City, is part of a strategy by Japan's largest company to expand hybrids from a niche in the marketplace (just 5 percent of its American sales now) to mainstream (25 percent of its sales by 2010)."
At the same time, the energy bill signed by President Bush on Aug. 8 effectively gave a break to American manufacturers by extending what could be a tax credit of as much as $3,400 per car to purchasers of the first 60,000 hybrids sold by a company. The credit phases out after that. Toyota sold more than 60,000 hybrids in the first six months of this year, so the tax law seems intended to help General Motors and Ford.
Subaru Legacy turbo hybrid for 2007? The specs sounds impressive, certainly more impressive thant the Honda Accord hybrid. ALSO AWD, wagon versions and boxer engine are ingredients for an almost perfect hybrid! This could be my future winter snowmobile!
An electrical Subaru? What is Subaru's competitive advantage over Toyota? It is owned by Fuji a battery manufacturer. That in itself may give Subaru a pretty good advantage! As Toyota keeps on dragging their feet about plug-ins, Subaru can give Toyota a knock out punch with high volume production of plug-in or electrical vehicles! I am confident there will be great demand for such vehicles!
BMW-Daimler Chryselr- GM hybrids? I myself would never buy a hybrid BMW. BMW handling should never be compromised by the extra weight of a hybrid system, but if the market demands it, so be it!!
I think Subaru's hybrid endeavors will somehow flow into GM products! They are a bit too close to go their seperate ways!(GM owns a portion of Subaru)
In fact I dont know if you follow the stats but BMW customer satisfaction/reliability has been increasing throughout the years ! It appears you must be mixing up BMW with other Germans(MB and VW).
Owning my BMW 3 series for seven years has been problem free for me! A Subie or a BMW? I would buy a BMW again any day!!!. No sedan can handle like a Bimmer, none!
"SHANGHAI, Sept 8 - Volkswagen will start making hybrid cars by 2008 with its main Chinese partner and may kick off large-scale production of the energy-efficient vehicles by 2010, the Chinese company said on Thursday."
It seems to me that all the carping against the plug-in hybrid ignores the economic and political, foreign policy advantages of reducing gasoline usage. We import huge quantities of oil to refine into gasoline. The outsize proceeds of this purchase flows primarily to regimes that hate us and consists of a huge transfer of wealth from us to the rest of the world. Even granting that electric production is not cost or environmentally free, those costs are born by us without enriching Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, et al. Very little electricity is generated with oil---coal and hydro is used primarily---and even if it costs the same per mile to run a car on electricity or by hybrids, those costs will not impoverish us as a nation, make as hostage to terrible regimes, or tempt us into unnecessary wars. eprupis
...I like the idea of a plug-in hybrid - you get all the advantages of an EV-only car, but have the gas engine as a back-up in case you need to go farther than the battery alone can take you.
"It seems to me that all the carping against the plug-in hybrid ignores the economic and political, foreign policy advantages of reducing gasoline usage."
Plug in is a great idea; it has already been tried with the GM EV-1. But the idea of converting a stock Prius to electric only via switch (or some other way) to allow the owner to go on short shopping trips, etc. , has problems.
It is not a matter of geopolitics, it is a matter of practicality. To use only the batteries requires going deeper into the discharge cycle of the batteries, which is what causes NiMh batteries to fail. The Toyota and Honda engineers keep their batteries between 20% and 80% of capacity for this reason. One would have to either increase the amount of batteries or risk losing those batteries prematurely.
The current Prius can go a couple of miles on electricity (at slow speeds) before the ICE kicks in. That distance is therefore the longest that is considered safe (to ensure long-term reliability) by the engineers at Toyota.
"Very little electricity is generated with oil---coal and hydro is used primarily"
Natural gas is extensively used on the west coast. Like it or not, the upcoming personal transportation technologies that will require copious amounts of electricity*, will virtually mandate new power plant construction. Whether they'll be fueld by fossil resources (regardless of national origin) or nuclear reaction is up for grabs, but there is no possibility of sufficient hydroelectric production expansion to meet anticipated needs left in this country.
*hydrogen fueled vehicles in particular - though hydrogen is the most abundant element in the universe, on earth it's locked in water and takes electricity to extract it.
I agree! With my daily mileage around 40 miles, I’d like the option of setting the gas/electric bias to run the battery down to 50% capacity over 40 miles, if that makes any sense.
My understanding is that there is a controller that determines how much electric vs. gas to use. I would like the option of adjusting that and plugging in my car to replenish the batteries.
Another thought, the car should be able to “learn” my driving patterns and optimize the amount of battery/gas usage. Driving during a different time of day or with a different speed/power profile would alert the system to use the battery more conservatively. That way, if I take the car on a trip over the weekend, I wouldn’t deplete the batteries in the first 40 miles. That would be pretty cool if you ask me!
You can be sure that if hybrid vehicles are viable for a long period of time, that they will become increasingly sophisticated over that time.
The current crop of hybrids are only on the second or third iteration and have had little competition and relatively small sales volumes. That will change.
"The current crop of hybrids are only on the second or third iteration and have had little competition and relatively small sales volumes. That will change."
Unless other technologies come to the forefront, especially diesel with low sulfur.
Diesel does absolutely nothing to address stop & slow traffic conditions, which millions of people have to deal with on their daily commute. The "full" hybrid design does. In fact, it thrives under those conditions, since it can propel the vehicle exclusively using electricity. Some even allow you to run the A/C using only electricity too.
That is a rather significant shortcoming of diesel, one that will prevent it from competing well.
I would also think that if a hybrid diesel did exist, there would be problems with enabling an auto start feature on it. The is one of the compelling reasons why I like the Prius so much. I understand the HCH has improved for 2006 and I will be taking one for a test drive.
Why do you believe a compression ignition engine would be more difficult to enable autostart on than a spark ignition engine? Provide fuel, spin the starter motor, and the engine starts - regardless. A direct injection diesel engine requires no spark ignition system or cold weather glow plug system, either.
It has been done. Chrysler built a very nice diesel hybrid in the late 1990s. They were shot down by upper management that did not think people were crazy enough to pay a premium for a hybrid.
The ESX3's mild hybrid electric (or "mybrid") powertrain combines a clean diesel engine, electric motor, and lithium-ion battery to achieve 72 miles per gallon
"I don't think it's that simple. Otherwise it would have been done already."
Now there's a piece of logic - I think the same reasoning was used by other armchair experts about faster-than-sound level flight before Chuck Yeager climbed into the Bell X-1 hung from a B-29 in the early '50s and made history. While I don't have any experience with hybrids, I have had extensive experience with diesel cars in the distant past, having owned two Peugeot diesels, a Datsun Maxima Diesel, a Mercedes diesel, and two Oldsmobile diesels. It isn't rocket science to start and stop these beasts. Electrically open a fuel flow valve in the fuel injection pump, spin the starter motor, and the engine runs. Shutting down only requires turning off the fuel injection pump electrical fuel flow valve. Whatever the reason implementing a diesel hybrid hasn't already been done commercially, it does not involve the basic mechanics of starting and stopping the engine. Price and weight could very well be factors though - diesel engines are heavier and more costly to build due to the more massive components (engine block [more likely cast iron than aluminum], pistons, connecting rods, crankshaft, and perhaps a turbocharger) required to withstand the extremely high compression ratios involved (22:1). At a minimum, I'd expect a $1,000.00 sticker premium and maybe a 75 lb. additional weight penalty (right over the front wheels) over a gasoline hybrid, which just might be a deal buster for many potential buyers. If anyone ventures forth with a commercial diesel hybrid, Volkswagon might be the most likely since they have extensive experience with small, direct injection, turbocharged diesel engines. (IMHO)
I guess they lost the blueprints, otherwise it would have been resurrected already. Did it have auto stop start? Did it have electric a/c? If they do bring it back hopefully it is not like the Liberty Diesel. Talk about a :lemon: :lemon:
It has not been resurrected for the same reason diesel cars cannot be sold in CA. Our poor quality diesel in most of the country. I'm sure much of the R&D was used in other cars. It may be used in the DCC/GM hybrids.
Actually, that's a good point, I failed to realize the limitations it would have in the marketplace. I'm just wondering why there is no announcement since the advent of clean diesel is just around the corner. Do you know if it will have electric AC and some type of autostart?
I have no idea the end product from either GM or DCC. I do know that my sorta hybrid GMC has electric AC. I sit at the intersection with the engine shut down and cold air is blowing out. Great dual climate control.
Several diesel/hybrids have been shown at the auto shows. Mercury & Mercedes are two of them.
"As the world's first PZEV capable diesel, the Mercury Meta One concept shows that advanced technologies that we're developing promise the potential to deliver diesels that can be as clean as the cleanest gasoline engines," said Schmidt. "The torque of this engine, when combined with the modular hybrid-electric transmission, also provides excellent driving performance."
Powerful diesel/electric hybrid drive system underlines innovative concept. State-of-the-art V8 diesel engine with 184 kW/250 hp from the S-Class and an electric motor (50 kW) deliver a total of 234 kW of power and 860 Nm of torque Acceleration of a sports car: 0 to 100 km/h in just 6.6 seconds; top speed electronically limited to 250 km/h
Interesting articles. Appreciate the links. Though your Sierra is a hybrid, I have no idea why GM invested in something that will only yield a 1-3 MPG gain. Makes little sense.
I don't disagree. It is very quiet starting and if I need 110 volts AC it is handy. I don't think it will be a big gas savings. It would not be worth the $2500 premium. Only time will tell if it is worth the $1000 premium that I paid. It may have been a political motive for GM to build them.
"Interesting articles. Appreciate the links. Though your Sierra is a hybrid, I have no idea why GM invested in something that will only yield a 1-3 MPG gain. Makes little sense."
Prime target consumer on these hybrid pickups are contractors who need the 110 volt outlets, so they don't have to carry a generator.
Comments
"If, in fact, hybrids get us back to electric vehicles, and that's where we ultimately want to get back to, maybe the hybrid enthusiasm is a blessing," he said.
http://www.timesheraldonline.com/ci_2981315
http://biz.yahoo.com/bw/050830/305436.html?.v=1
Honda has sold 100,000 vehicles in North America. No idea about their worldwide sales.
Hybrids are climbing up.
August-2005 is the highest for Hybrid Sales.
Prius - 9,850
Civic - 4,146
Highlander - 2,925
RX400h - 2,607
Accord - 2,336
Escape - 1,363
Insight - 80
Total - 23,307
Its also the Highest for Civic, Highlander.
August-2004 was roughly around 7,000 units, so it has tripled in a year.
Great. Looks like Honda must have sold all Insights in their inventory.
At the 2003 Detroit Motor Show.
G. Richard Wagoner, the CEO of General Motors, boasted the
company would be marketing hybrid-electric vehicles from the
year-end and would sell a million of them in 2007. But the years
passed without a single full-scale hybrid-electric vehicle rolling
off a GM assembly line. Meanwhile Japanese automakers steadily
gained a foothold in the hybrid-electric vehicle market.
And by the way - welcome to the Forums!
http://www.newsdemocrat.com/main.asp?SectionID=1&SubSectionID=1&ArticleID=120341
"As the price of gas has risen, manufacturers have worked to lower the price of hybrids. The average price of a hybrid vehicle in 1999 was around $89,000. Toyota said its 2005 Prius, a roomy four-door coupe, gets about 60 miles per gallon. The price tag on this new vehicle is around $20,000, which is competitive with most new vehicles."
I noticed something interesting in that article about the pumps and how they cant display gas prices above $2.999. isn't that a weird number? why isn't it $9.999? Let me say some of the gas stations where I live have no problems displaying prices over $2.999.
http://www.autoextremist.com/research/hand.shtml#plug-in
discussions where they belong.
With gas prices in the county soaring well over $3 in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, on top of record-breaking prices during the summer, hybrid and other fuel-efficient vehicles are in greater demand than ever before, according to local car dealers.
http://www.wilmingtonstar.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050907/ZNYT01/509070375/1004/LO- CAL
"TOKYO, Sept. 5 - With Hurricane Katrina pushing American gas prices above $3 a gallon at the pump, Toyota Motor may find itself in the right place at the right time, with a new, half-mile assembly line capable of producing gasoline-electric hybrid Prius cars at the rate of one a minute.
The line, in a factory in Toyota City, is part of a strategy by Japan's largest company to expand hybrids from a niche in the marketplace (just 5 percent of its American sales now) to mainstream (25 percent of its sales by 2010)."
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/07/business/worldbusiness/07hybrid.html?adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=11- 26105246-uyVkdWrgafkQLpxHy9MQpg
Any comments or government links that refute this?
http://www.greencarcongress.com/2005/09/fuji_heavys_tur.html#more
An electrical Subaru? What is Subaru's competitive advantage over Toyota? It is owned by Fuji a battery manufacturer. That in itself may give Subaru a pretty good advantage! As Toyota keeps on dragging their feet about plug-ins, Subaru can give Toyota a knock out punch with high volume production of plug-in or electrical vehicles! I am confident there will be great demand for such vehicles!
http://www.detnews.com/2005/autosinsider/0509/03/autos-302244.htm
BMW-Daimler Chryselr- GM hybrids? I myself would never buy a hybrid BMW. BMW handling should never be compromised by the extra weight of a hybrid system, but if the market demands it, so be it!!
I think Subaru's hybrid endeavors will somehow flow into GM products! They are a bit too close to go their seperate ways!(GM owns a portion of Subaru)
http://www.usatoday.com/money/autos/2005-09-07-bmw-hybrid_x.htm
Owning my BMW 3 series for seven years has been problem free for me! A Subie or a BMW? I would buy a BMW again any day!!!. No sedan can handle like a Bimmer, none!
"SHANGHAI, Sept 8 - Volkswagen will start making hybrid cars by 2008 with its main Chinese partner and may kick off large-scale production of the energy-efficient vehicles by 2010, the Chinese company said on Thursday."
http://tinyurl.com/787yf
Plug in is a great idea; it has already been tried with the GM EV-1. But the idea of converting a stock Prius to electric only via switch (or some other way) to allow the owner to go on short shopping trips, etc. , has problems.
It is not a matter of geopolitics, it is a matter of practicality. To use only the batteries requires going deeper into the discharge cycle of the batteries, which is what causes NiMh batteries to fail. The Toyota and Honda engineers keep their batteries between 20% and 80% of capacity for this reason. One would have to either increase the amount of batteries or risk losing those batteries prematurely.
The current Prius can go a couple of miles on electricity (at slow speeds) before the ICE kicks in. That distance is therefore the longest that is considered safe (to ensure long-term reliability) by the engineers at Toyota.
http://www.iht.com/articles/2005/09/09/business/wbauto.php
Natural gas is extensively used on the west coast. Like it or not, the upcoming personal transportation technologies that will require copious amounts of electricity*, will virtually mandate new power plant construction. Whether they'll be fueld by fossil resources (regardless of national origin) or nuclear reaction is up for grabs, but there is no possibility of sufficient hydroelectric production expansion to meet anticipated needs left in this country.
*hydrogen fueled vehicles in particular - though hydrogen is the most abundant element in the universe, on earth it's locked in water and takes electricity to extract it.
My understanding is that there is a controller that determines how much electric vs. gas to use. I would like the option of adjusting that and plugging in my car to replenish the batteries.
Another thought, the car should be able to “learn” my driving patterns and optimize the amount of battery/gas usage. Driving during a different time of day or with a different speed/power profile would alert the system to use the battery more conservatively. That way, if I take the car on a trip over the weekend, I wouldn’t deplete the batteries in the first 40 miles. That would be pretty cool if you ask me!
-murray
The current crop of hybrids are only on the second or third iteration and have had little competition and relatively small sales volumes. That will change.
Unless other technologies come to the forefront, especially diesel with low sulfur.
Here is an article from the International Herald Tribune.
http://www.iht.com/articles/2005/09/09/business/wbauto.php
Diesel does absolutely nothing to address stop & slow traffic conditions, which millions of people have to deal with on their daily commute. The "full" hybrid design does. In fact, it thrives under those conditions, since it can propel the vehicle exclusively using electricity. Some even allow you to run the A/C using only electricity too.
That is a rather significant shortcoming of diesel, one that will prevent it from competing well.
JOHN
The ESX3's mild hybrid electric (or "mybrid") powertrain combines a clean diesel engine, electric motor, and lithium-ion battery to achieve 72 miles per gallon
http://www.allpar.com/model/intrepid-esx3.html
Now there's a piece of logic - I think the same reasoning was used by other armchair experts about faster-than-sound level flight before Chuck Yeager climbed into the Bell X-1 hung from a B-29 in the early '50s and made history.
Several diesel/hybrids have been shown at the auto shows. Mercury & Mercedes are two of them.
"As the world's first PZEV capable diesel, the Mercury Meta One concept shows that advanced technologies that we're developing promise the potential to deliver diesels that can be as clean as the cleanest gasoline engines," said Schmidt. "The torque of this engine, when combined with the modular hybrid-electric transmission, also provides excellent driving performance."
http://www.canadiandriver.com/news/05detroit/041228-2.htm
Powerful diesel/electric hybrid drive system underlines innovative concept. State-of-the-art V8 diesel engine with 184 kW/250 hp from the S-Class and an electric motor (50 kW) deliver a total of 234 kW of power and 860 Nm of torque
Acceleration of a sports car: 0 to 100 km/h in just 6.6 seconds; top speed electronically limited to 250 km/h
http://www.daimlerchrysler.com/dccom/0,,0-5-7154-1-160159-1-0-0-160157-0-0-135-7145-0-0-0-- 0-0-0-0,00.html
Prime target consumer on these hybrid pickups are contractors who need the 110 volt outlets, so they don't have to carry a generator.